Representation

What do you know about the world?

Write down the reason you made these choices.

How did other people vote?

What is representation?

When media re-present individuals, groups, events and issues.

You do this when you’re telling (re-presenting) stories of your life to people.

representationExample

Your stories will differ in their representations depending on who you are talking to. For example, you might relate details of a night out to friends quite differently to the story you tell your parents.

For a more in depth explanation, you can look it up in a Media & Communication Dictionary. You could purchase the Oxford edition or check out this free online pdf.

Now you understand what representation is, how do we analyse or ‘read’ these representations of reality?

In his book, Mythologies (1957), Roland Barthes built on the work of semiologist Ferdinand De Saussure by suggesting that we ‘read’ media texts on 2 levels.

Denotative Level: What we actually see
Connotative Level: The associations you make with what you see

Look at the following images. What do they denote and connote?

rose

Denotations:

A close up of a red rose against a black & white background. There are a few water droplets on the petals of the rose.

Connotations:

The giving of a rose connotes love and affection

In the western world, red is seen as a colour passion.

The water droplets connote freshness, nature and life.

The dark (B&W) background might connote sophistication, possibly danger or mystery.

The removal of colour from the background and the central positioning and the size of the rose in the foreground serves to focus the reader’s attention on the rose.

——

hillaryClinton

Denotations:

White woman, dyed blond hair, make up, formal clothing, late 60s, gesturing at herself, broad open-mouthed grin, raised eyebrows, slight look of disbelief, crowd in background out of focus

Hillary Clinton

Connotations:

Depending on your own experiences you might think of the following; pleasant surprise or false smile (depending on your feelings towards politicians or this particular politian), powerful, important, public speaking, politics, democrat, election, USA, scandal, feminism, #womancard.

——

RECAP: We’ve just looked at 2 photographs paying attention to 2 codes of media language:

Symbolic Codes	Technical codes
Lighting & Colour Positioning Setting & Location Facial Expressions & Body Language Objects Key Signifiers/Images Clothing, Hair & Make Up	Camera Angles Framing (ELS, LS, MLS, MS, CU, ECU, POV) Cropping Juxtaposition (2 separate signs that together make contrasting meaning)

What other codes do we need to look at for effective analysis?

Written codes can be looked at from the following angles:

Slogan
Typeface (Font)
Headlines
Caption
Style
Choice of words
Emphasis of words

Now analyse the following image. Make a note of the denotations and connotations.

starbucks

The more details you can take note of, the better…

Denotations:

Coffee cup in sharp focus positioned and casting a shadow on a table. The cup occupies a large portion in the left of the foreground of the picture. The background is out of focus and blurred to produce a bokeh of brown, orange and yellow colours. The text occupies the centre and right of the foreground. The typeface is a mixture of large, sans-serif, predominantly white letters with the YOU written entirely in capitals in Starbucks Green. Their is a smaller slogan written in cursive “Taste of Inspiration” just under the main slogan.

Connotations:

Here is a possible response to this advert in essay form.

Essential Viewing:

Most of what you have just read and watched relates to still images; posters, painting and photographs. Moments in time that might not have the same impact due to our lack of experience with the subject of the image.

This video will focus more on representation on TV

Here’s a video overview looking at fair representation:

The following slideshow will try to look at representation from a modern perspective, focusing on representations of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality, Nationality, Socio-Economic status, Age, Disability.

Professor Hans Rosling believes that the media can do a better job.

We can now look at these issues in more depth.

Race, Ethnicity & Post-Colonialism:

Key Theorists:

Edward Said

European countries (mainly Britain and France) created a view of the Orient (Asia and Africa but mainly the Middle East) for european consumption. A repository of oriental imagery (stereotypes) has been created which is still used by some today:

The Sensual Woman:
The East is a mysterious, barbaric, savage place full of marvels and monsters

“None of this Orient is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European material civilisation and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles…”

“Orientalism is a style of thought based upon a … distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and … ‘the Occident’. Thus a very large mass of writers, among whom are poets, novelists, philosophers, political theorists, economists, and imperial administrators, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind’, destiny, and so on…”

“The phenomenon of Orientalism … deals principally, not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient . . . despite or beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a ‘real’ Orient” (1-3, 5).

To simplify and summarise the words of Edward Said:

The image of the Orient is that of ‘the Other’. It is seen as different and separate. These concepts were repeated so often as to have become part of Western ‘knowledge’ of the East.
Knowledge is power and so Western ‘knowledge’ of the East is Western power over the East.
Therefore, the production of writing, painting and map making of the East were Western representations of the East for use by the West to exert control over the East in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

Making connections:

Gayatri Spivak

Can the subaltern speak? Built upon the work of Antonio Gramsci. Can the lowest members of society engage in dialogue with the highest and if they can will they be heard or rather, once heard is there a system in place which will allow for their words to be put into practice? The simple answer is no. She identifies 4 Levels within Indian society: